The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus having an automatic dialling feature.
With a conventional facsimile apparatus which uses an auto dialling circuit for establishing a facsimile call through a telephone network in response to manual entry of an abbreviated called station number or operation of a specified key, a timer is provided to measure the amount of time elapsed from the time of completion of the facsimile call and time out if it exceeds a preset value before the called station answers, allowing the calling station to regard that the called station is busy.
As a result, it is necessary for the prior art auto dialling facsimile apparatus to preset the timer in accordance with an access time taken to establish a connection to the farthest of the registered destinations.
Since the call establishment time usually varies with the distance to destination, the preset value is greater than is necessary for calls to short distance destinations and therefore the apparatus unnecessarily holds switched connections to short distance destinations for a long period of time.